Henry Matisse once said, "The freedom of the artist is in reality the impossibility of following the path beaten by all others." In other words, the degree in which an artist interprets the world that is laid out before him is what makes him unique. Andy Warhol was a master at creating a distinctive account of what came before him and what presently surrounded him. It was this rare talent that made Andy Warhol into a pop culture icon with a profound influence on the world of modern art.

Andrew Warhola was born in 1928 to working class family of Forest City, Pennsylvania. His poor upbringing undoubtedly contributed to his future obsession with money and celebrity. In 1946, Andy enrolled in Carnegie Institute of Technology as a commercial art student. Upon graduation, he moved to New York City where he quickly became an accomplished art designer. He did graphic work for such establishments as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and advertising for I. Miller shoes. Although successful, Warhol eventually became disenchanted with his career and set out to be part of the new movement of pop art (Lucie-Smith 336).

In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol rattled the art world with his silk screens of Hollywood beauties and the now legendary, Campbell's Soup Cans. Society, up until that point, had never seen anything so literal be called art. In fact, the Campbell Soup Company forced Warhol to defend the paintings as legitimate works of art after they sued him for copyright infringement. They later dropped the lawsuit after deciding it was good advertisement (Pohland 157). The Soup Cans sparked something inside Warhol and he began to use everyday objects as his inspirations: Brillo soap-pad boxes, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Heinz 57, and Kellogg's, to name a few. He began painting these objects by hand, but eventually silk-screened them directly to the canvas. This process outraged the art world. One critic even said, "his work is just too silly to think about," (Russell). He became a constant irritant to fellow artists and museums, many of which refused to accept his creations as art.

This opposition did not stop Warhol from pursuing this creative outlet. His style became a statement to the world about his view of pop culture. "The reason I am painting this way is that I want to be a machine," said Warhol. He expanded this form to include famous Hollywood and political icons. From Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, to Jackie Kennedy and Mao, Warhol translated universal images in a unique and unprecedented way. He became obsessed with mass production and interchangeability. He even used the same image of the Mona Lisa and repeated it thirty times, entitling it as Thirty are Better Than One. Critics continued to reprimand Warhol for his art: "[Andy Warhol] from start to finish was a self-promoting trickster, a pseudo-artist who corrupted the young, fouled the very notion of high art, manipulated the market, went along with the media was triviality personified," (Russell).

Yet, within this opposition, Andy Warhol became a star. He used his art to reach the masses. His images became engrained in the minds of both the working class and the Hollywood starlets. Gianni Mercurio is quoted as saying, "What [Warhol] wanted was to communicate, to make art as popular as possible, to fascinate not only the rich and the famous but also ordinary people, such as students and workers. All his efforts were aimed in that direction" (Morera 20). Warhol did indeed steal art out of the hands of the rich and give it to the poor. Everyone recognized his art, and thus recognized him.

Andy Warhol became a fixture on the social scene throughout the sixties and seventies. He partied at Studio 54 and ate at Serendipity 3. He hung out with all the icons of that time, yet remained a mystery to most. His private life became synonymous with his art. He was one of the only people of that time to be publicly homosexual. He later documented...

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“Pop Art is an art movement in the U.S. in the 1950’s and reached its peak of activity in the 1960’s, chose as its subject matter the anonymous, everyday, standardized, and banal iconography in American life, as comic strips, billboards, commercial products, and celebrity images and dealt with them typically in such form as outsize commercially smooth paintings, mechanically reproduced silk-screens, large-scale facsimiles, and soft sculptures”(Dictionary). While looking up the definition of Pop Art, Dictionary.com tells you “see also AndyWarhol.” AndyWarhol defined Pop Art. Warhol was a twentieth- century American artist who took simple consumer objects and took them to the level of art. Warhol is best known for his “precise, enlarged image of Campbell’s tomato soup”(Dictionary). In the book called AndyWarhol: prince of pop written by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, they stated, “The work created by AndyWarhol elevated everyday images to art, ensuring Warhol a fame that has far outlasted the 15 minutes he predicted for everyone else. He not only produced iconic art that blended high and popular culture; he also made controversial films,...

...On August 6, 1928, AndyWarhol was born as Andrew Warhola to Andrej and Julia Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They were a working class family that stuck close to the roots and traditions of their Eastern European heritage. In 1934 Andy began attending the local Holmes School and took free art classes at Carnegie Institute (now the Carnegie Museum of Art). Andy had an amazing gift for drawing even from a very young age. In addition to drawing, Andy was fascinated by Hollywood cinema and spent much of his time at the local cinema. He also enjoyed taking pictures that he developed by himself in his basement. Through out the years Andy continued to pursue his artistic abilities and became astoundingly famous for them. More than twenty years after his death, AndyWarhol remains one of the most influential figures in contemporary art and culture. AndyWarhol was known as a leading figure in the visual arts movement and was responsible for making colossal changes to what was commonly known as art.
Between 1945 and 1949 Andy attended college at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design with the goal of becoming a commercial illustrator. After graduation Warhol moved to New York city and began to work for...

...AndyWarhol: Pop Politics
AndyWarhol -- one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century -- captured the likeness of some of the most visionary and powerful political leaders of the 20th century. Images of John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Queen Elizabeth II, and Mao Zedong, among others will hang side-by-side when the Currier Museum of Art presents AndyWarhol: Pop Politics from September 27, 2008 through January 4, 2009.
Pop Politics displays together for the first time more than sixty of Warhol's paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs of political figures. His portraits of American presidents and presidential candidates, queens, Communist dictators, and other political figures reveal intriguing, yet until now unexplored insights into Warhol's own celebrity status and political leanings. Warhol's images of these powerful personalities comment on the interrelationships between politics and celebrity culture in the late twentieth century -- connections that remain ever present today. Timed to coincide with the 2008 presidential election, this exhibition offers a probing and entertaining look through the eyes of America's most famous Pop artist at the leaders who shaped the twentieth century.
Warhol (1928-1987) rose to fame in the 1960s and became synonymous...

...﻿ANDYWARHOL
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At the age of 8, Warhol contracted Chorea - also known as St. Vitus's Dance - a rare and sometimes fatal disease of the nervous system that left him bedridden for several months. It was during these months, while Warhol was sick in bed, that his mother, herself a skillful artist, gave him his first drawing lessons. Drawing soon became Warhol's favorite childhood pastime. He was also an avid fan of the movies, and when his mother bought him a camera at the age of 9 he took up photography as well, developing film in a makeshift darkroom he set up in their basement.
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The Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art showcases the finest examples of painting, sculpture and other impressive work by some of the world’s most influential and renowned artists. The current exhibition of Classic Contemporary: Lichtensein, Warhol and Friends is an exhibit that features important paintings and sculpture by major contemporary artists, primarily from the 1960s and ‘70s. AndyWarhol was at the forefront of the Pop Art movement; Pop artists portray clearly recognizable objects from everyday world and the mass media. Warhol’s Flowers, 1967, silkscreen on synthetic polymer paint on canvas, is included in the exhibition. Flowers were quite an inspiration for Warhol time and again. “Flowers in art and culture have been ubiquitous since the beginning of recorded art history,” says Smith. “The floral theme wasn’t any more exhausted when Warhol was doing it than when 17th-century Dutch painters or the Impressionists were. But Warhol was sly; he was always playing with traditional art historical themes” (Frey).
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...The Founder of Pop Art: AndyWarholAndyWarhol is the god father of Pop Art. His window advertisements were the beginning of an era where art would be seen in an array of forms away from the traditional paintings and sculptures of the old world. His love of bright colors and bold patters along with his quirky personality paved the way for his successful career as a major figure in the pop art movement.
Warhol was born in 1930, in the town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His parents were Czech immigrants. After his father died, Andy was forced to support his family through odd jobs. He worked his way through Carnegie Tech., Pittsburgh where he studied commercial art. After graduation, Warhol moved to New York where he launched a successful career as an illustrator.
He began producing "Pop" pictures in 1960 with works based on Popeye, Nancy and Dick Tracy comics. These early works were first shown as back drops for department store windows and were painted in loosely brushed style based on Abstract Expressionism. Warhol's first works using comic material tended to soften hard professional gestures and aggressive vocabulary of the texts and images. Warhol countered the scrupulous accuracy of the original genre with imprecision and deliberate error. In doing so, he soiled the comic strips...

...one is reflecting on the life and works of AndyWarhol, it is established that he changed the world we live in. Through the use of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and films, Warhol transformed the standard of modern art by making his artworks more vibrant and energetic. His nonconforming style had attracted much of society, which included many celebrities. Using many techniques, such as repetition and color placement, Warhol brought his views on materialism, politics, economics, and the media to the art world. As a great influence on the twentieth century pop art movement, AndyWarhol, painter, filmmaker, and printmaker, rose to become a keystone in the contemporary art world. After taking cues from society in the mid-twentieth century, Warhol did what many artists strived to do but failed. Warhol’s imagination would begin to construct ideas that were unheard of but innovative at the same time. By altering American values, Warhol had the chance to emphasize how easily the media and popculture influence people.
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&#9;Warhol's Campbell's soup cans are arguably some of...